1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to a method and system for facilitating service transactions between service providers and purchasers for services, and more particularly to a computer-implemented method/system that provides a service marketplace, both on-line and off-line, for transacting services driven by purchasers or by the service providers. In particular, the invention makes services freely tradable as goods via a set of standardizing material terms describing such service transactions.
2. Description of Related Arts
A variety of service transaction promoting systems have been developed for promoting the transactions of services either on-line or off-line. The following sites are examples of attempts to transact services on-line known at the time of filing the application. Applicant is not aware of when such systems may have become known to the public relative to the time of conception and/or reduction to practice of the invention. While many companies have attempted to transact services on the Internet, none of them provides a solution to freely trade services as goods, stocks or commodities. For example, ServiceMagic.com assists a purchaser to search via a list of pre-screened home maintenance service professionals selected by an interested purchaser. It is limited to home maintenance services, and its pre-screening procedure only ensures the providers are licensed by the state, have not filed bankruptcy within the past seven years, and have no liens or judgments against them within the past three years. The site rather passively provides the information without going forward to compare or match any transaction. None of these searches results in any forms of binding transactions of services. In other words, ServiceMagic.com is merely a volume of on-line maintenance service yellow pages.
Elance.com intends to connect buyers with freelancers or independent contractors electronically but having a few shortcomings. Firstly, the e-lanced services are limited to the traditional freelancing services, such as writing, designing and translation, and conventional professional services, such as legal and accounting services. Secondly, the buyers have to browse respective profiles of each service provider so as to invite them to bid. Alternatively, the buyers wait for service providers to submit proposals including estimate and explanations responsive to the buyers' projects. Then the buyers “handpick” a bid-winner. Although Elance.com is implemented on-line, its automation is limited to recording and posting offers. As such, the number and length of the proposals is significantly limited by the capability of the human brain for processing multiple variables of multiple proposals. Thirdly, Elance.com does not provide actual bidding or auctions since whatever being proposed is not final and binding on the buyers. Rather, the buyers are free to disregard all the proposals or arbitrarily decide a winner after a posting section is closed. The alleged bidding process is not an actual bid but rather a one-sided (pro-buyer) transactional forum.
Fourthly, in its default procedure, Elance.com certifies the buyers' ability to pay via credit cards or debit cards but does not certify any service providers' credentials or ability to carry out the services. Fifthly, Elance.com collects the feedback from participants to establish cumulative ratings of other chosen participants, but it does not verify the comments. Just like any classified advertisements in newspapers, the service providers may post whatever they would like on Elance.com, and Elance.com is not responsible for the contents other than the credit card information.
According to CNET News, a handful of software companies are seeking to automate management of legal contracts and agreements for tracking contract terms and conditions, which is still an abstract idea, and the idea is limited to internal contract management.
Currently, there is no neutral platform facilitating service transactions between purchasers and service providers via automatically and simultaneously comparing multiple service proposals with multiple variables.